MTCIM May 2010 Seattle

This is an overview of the conference and the various speakers.
HELENE M. LANGEVIN Research Associate Professor Department of Neurology Univ. of Vermont.  – Studies Connective Tissue and Acupuncture talked on Connective Tissue Physiology and Its Relevance to Manual Therapies.  From Twitter feeds other studies he talked about.
Effectiveness of therapeutic massage for generalized anxiety disorder: a randomized controlled trial.
Dan Cherkin, Senior Scientific Investigator with the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. Is Massage Effective for Back and Neck Pain? — Applying the Research to Your Practice.  This is a link to the paper he was talking about.

From tweets links to pubmed:

Effectiveness of therapeutic massage for generalized anxiety disorder: a randomized controlled trial.

Unanticipated benefits of CAM therapies for back pain: an exploration of patient experiences

Randomized trial of therapeutic massage for chronic neck pain.

Panel Discussion: William Meeker, DC, MPH – Moderator The Role of Massage Therapy in Public Health: A Panel Discussion Panelists include: Cynthia Price,; Marissa Brooks,  Deborah Senn and John Weeks

Great overview of WA States Every Category law by Debra Senn our former insurance commissioner and now lawyer with  and how she created it.  Lori Belinski, a well know local massage therapist and political advocate helped create the law and fought off 11 law suits and later 5 attempts to appeal it.  It is always being challenged.  In WA State we are able to become contracted providers for Major Medical Health insurance companies such as Regence Blue Shield, Aetna and all health ins. companies.  Other states could really learn from us.

One of the questions for the panel was “Is Massage a Health Care Profession”.  Debra Senn answered Yes! We are here in WA State because of her work, but I think the rest of the US lags far behind us and Canada is farther ahead.

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MTCIM – Day 2

Talk about brain drain… but the wine and cheese party helped debrief!

Personally I didn’t understand any of the talks in the am.  So if any one else did please share.

I went to the breakout session on massage and anxiety/depression and had some great experiences.  My favorite was between Dawn Donovan and Chris Moyer.  Dawn presented her research on Use of Massage Therapy to Reduce Anxiety and to Improve Sleep in Clients Participating in an Inpatient Withdrawal Management (Detox) Program: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study

What I loved most was that it was real.  She started with saying how many billions of dollars are spent in the US and Canada on drug and alcohol rehab and issues each year.  Her study did show that massage was successful in reducing anxiety in people who were getting off of their substance.   I loved that she intuitively decided on the massage protocol which was totally different from her usual form of bodywork.  Taking into consideration the clients needs , combining intuition and science is what we need more.   I also think it was just the idea that it was on a topic that could actually be useful to massage therapists in getting and keeping clients or creating a job in massage.
Chris Moyer isn’t a massage therapist but is a researcher who loves massage.   He is another great example of being able to take massage and measure what it is doing.  He did a literature study on whether or not massage helps reduce cortisol.  Interestingly he found that it does not reduce cortisol which is very contradictory to most of the research already done in this area mainly by Tiffany Field at the Touch Research Institute.
Making research understandable is the main reason I am attending this conference.  I am also learning about why research is so important and what it can do for the massage profession.  I think one of the big challenges is taking research and turning it into something that massage therapists can use to apply to their practice which is really just about getting and keeping clients.

I was later told by Ruth Werner that I was also witness to a rare phenomenon in research with one presenter, Ross Turchinov being intensely challenged.  (I personally didn’t understand what he was trying to say or show.  The studies he did refer to were all done in the 50’s-70’s and the challenger didn’t think that there was any prior proof of what he was talking about.  His talk was “Impact of Massage Therapy on Electrophysiology of the Soft Tissue and Cellular Function”.   I might try to talk to him tomorrow to see if he could explain it more.

There are so many well known people there from all aspects of massage- Les Sweeney (ABMP), Sydney Duncan (Massage Today), someone from COMTA but I can’t remember her name right now, AMTA presidents/officers,  but hmm…. no sign of anyone from Massage Magazine.

It was such a great networking day too meeting many people who I have connected with on Facebook and www.massageprofessionals.com .   I can’t wait to show you a new project on massage research that will help you make sense of research that hopefully will be done in the fall!

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MTCIM – day 1

Wow what a jam packed day at the Massage Therapy Foundations Highlighting Massage Therapy in Complementary and Integrative Medicine (CIM) Research conference.

There is too much to assimilate right now but the one thing I can say and already knew this – WA State is far ahead of all the other states in being accepted as a health care profession and perhaps others could be learning from what is going on here in WA.   Debra Senn was the insurance commissioner in the early 90’s who was instrumental in getting massage and other CAM providers to be a providers for health insurance companies.  She spoke at the conference today and I wish I had got a chance to meet her afterwards.   The current problem that  CAM providers (MT, Acupuncturists and others) in WA are now having is not being paid fair fees for services.  Her advice was to just hang on and bear with the system as they work things out.   It is taking time for insurance companies to really get the idea that massage can actually help save them money.  They still don’t see massage as being a replacement for things like surgery.   That is one of the main reasons I think that we need to have more research to show these companies just what it is that massage can do.   But then again WA State has accepted it without much research in place so I guess go figure…

I sat through some really interesting break out sessions of presentations of case studies and discussions that I am still trying to figure out what it all really means.   I think what case studies are used for is to help decide what research is needed next.

There were big posters in the lobby that I haven’t figured out what they are about – if they are case studies or actual research studies so hope to get to them tomorrow!

The other striking thing to me is that I think I heard the attendance count was about 350 people which is great and about 1/3 of them were from WA State.   Out of 15,000 MT state wide, that number is disappointing.  I am not sure if it because MT don’t care because we are already providers and accepted as health care professionals or what – but I do know that getting MT to rally is like herding cats.  It seems to be the same people in the leadership roles around the country.  I know most are just focused on getting and keeping clients and making a living but you could be in CA where  I here your careers are being really challenged with this Assembly Bill 1822 -For more info see Massage Today.

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MT Foundation Conference begins

For the next three days I am going to be at the Highlighting Massage Therapy in Complementary and Integrative Medicine (CIM) Research” conference in Seattle!

It unofficially started tonight with about 50-75 people meeting to watch  the “DVD viewing party featuring highlights from the 2009 Fascia Congress that took place this past October in Amsterdam (www.fasciacongress.org).  It was sponsored by Tom Myers (Anatomy Trains). I unfortunately got there an hour late as I was working all day and then only stayed for less than an hour.  I was going to say I was late because I was reading the 25 page paper Bodhi Haraldsson posted on his Facebook page in response to my question about what was the MT Foundations Best Practices Symposium.  He was meeting for the last two days with that committee.  I haven’t gotten a chance to read it.  When I do I’ll try to tell you what it is in a paragraph or two!  That is one of my issues/concerns with all this focus on research – They talk like researchers – not massage therapists but maybe it’s just me.  I haven been in massage school in over 21 years and don’t really keep up on the science of it all.  I am more of the feeling type and it seems to work well for me and my clients.

It was already over my head.  I haven’t heard the words collalogen, epimysium, proprioception or fascicle in about 21 years.  From what I was able to gather is that there is some new science regarding muscle contraction but not sure what it really is all about or how or why I even really need to know about it.  I encourage anyone else there to share their comments and perspective on the evenings talk – or are we not supposed to be sharing!

I’ll talk to Ruth tomorrow for sure.

I ran into an old friend from massage school so hopefully we can sit together and talk about what we don’t remember from massage school! (or maybe she has and can fill me in!)

I was able to leave some brochures from Heal-wa.org there for the local WA State Massage Therapists.  We have this great resource here in WA where we can access some of the research databases and other resources online as a part of our licensing fees.  I’ll be writing much more about that too on my other site www.wa-massage-therapy.com/ce as I learn more how to use it and what it can be used for.  I did meet with Valarie Lawrence last week who is the manager of it all.  It is such an amazing resource!

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Want to make extra money?

I am starting 2 new websites to help massage therapists learn how to make extra money online.

www.massageschoolnotes.com is one of my latest creations.  My first site www.thebodyworker.com makes me about $1000 a month in Google Adsense income alone.  I basically started that site just sharing my massage school notes.  Now you can learn the process of creating a website to create residual income for your self to help support you in your career in massage.  The reason I am starting this is also that I was never a writer.  I started with collecting my notes and putting them into pages on a website.  When I first started in 1999, I actually had a hand written notebook that got me started.  I would then put the info into pages on the website.  One of the biggest concerns of massage therapists who are wanting to create residual income is the ‘fear of’ writing.   You don’t have to be a writer. All you need to be is an information junkie.

With this site – www.massageschoolnotes.com you can begin learning the process by sharing your own massage school notes, projects, test questions, study guides or any of your favorite books and resources.   When you do, the whole profession will benefit making massage school easier to get through!

My other project www.massagebusinessjournal.com is a similar concept.  I am seeking massage therapists who want to share their stories of how they are starting and building their massage business.   It will start off with your practice profile/author page and then progress to writing posts on just about every aspect that you were faced with and have overcome – finding office space, negotiating leases,  creating flyers/business cards and other marketing materials, overcoming challenges with difficult clients, creating your policies and learning how to enforce them….anything and everything you have gone through on the way to becoming a massage therapist.

I started this really as a result of hearing so many people saying things like “I don’t have any clients because of  the economy”.  The economy doesn’t need to be a factor.  There are many that are very successful and doing well.  There are so many books and resources out there for massage therapists but the one thing that is missing is the thoughts that go into taking action and getting/keeping clients.   I would love for people to start sharing that with others to help others learn that they can do it too!

With both sites you will be able to make money in various ways:

  • You can become a mentor for others and start working with local massage therapists or create an online mentoring program and promote your services on each site.
  • You can become an affiliate with various websites such as www.amazon.com and write about books that you have read or DVD’s that you have seen and get paid when people who click through your links buy the product.  (There are also tons of other affiliate programs)
  • I will be implementing a few different montetization systems testing one at a time.   One possibility is Google Adsense  Sharing which is sharing the income from clicks on Adsense ads that will be on the site.  Each author will have their own account with adsense and the ads will rotate.  The other option will be to create a membership site after I get about 30 authors and share the membership fee with them.  People will have to pay for a membership to read the full text of articles.   This will all be done through clickbank.com where you will need a free account with them.
  • You will need to promote your author profile which will have a link to the membership area and/or  a list of your articles.   Promotions can be anything from just writing a short article (300 words or so) on free article marketing sites such as ezinearticles.com.  It can also be posting in forums and on other people’s blogs with your unique page referenced attracting new readers.  The more you promote it the more you can make.

This will take time though before you are making money.  It takes about 2000 visitors a day or more to make anything substantial.  The more people write and promote, the better it will work for all.  This is a team effort!

Be sure to contact me for more info through one of those sites or through my contact form below (but go look at the sites first and let me know what you think!

Thanks

Julie Onofrio

www.thebodyworker.com
www.massage-career-guides.com
www.massageceguide.com
www.workless-playmore.com
www.massagebusinessjournal.com
www.massageschoolnotes.com

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Posted in The Wealthy Massage Therapist by Julie Onofrio. 2 Comments